Players Club Honors Women's Project 10/20 With Off-Broadway Excellence Award

Women's Project-the nation's number one theater producing plays written and directed by women-will be honored Tuesday (10/20) by the nation's leading club of the arts, the historic Players Club on Gramercy Park, when The Players Foundation gives its inaugural Off-Broadway Excellence Award to Women's Project at ceremonies Tuesday, October 20, at 5:30pm at The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South. This is the first time The Players has granted this award.

Kathleen Chalfant, who helped Julia Miles to found Women's Project in 1978, will join John Martello, Executive Director of The Players, as the evening's emcee. Accepting the award on behalf of Women's Project is Julie Crosby, the theater company's Producing Artistic Director.

The cast of Women's Project's upcoming production of Liz Duffy Adams's Or, directed by Wendy McClellan. (October 29 - November 22) will perform excerpts of the show at the ceremony.

Or , is Ms. Adams's fast-past, three-hander about Aphra Behn played by Maggie Siff trying to get out of the spy trade and into show biz, also features Kelly Hutchinson and Andy Paris playing multiple characters of varying genders including 17th century A-listers Nell Gwynne, King Charles II, and super-spy and double-agent William Scott. While war rages and Aphra and her friends celebrate free love, cross-dressing and pastoral lyricism, the 1660s start to look a lot like the 1960s. Verse or prose, now or then, love or death... and a lot of kissing.

The Players Club was founded in 1888 by Edwin Booth, America's pre-eminent Shakespearean actor, and 15 other incorporators, including Mark Twain and General William Tecumseh Sherman. The Players Foundation, chaired by Broadway Producer Elliot Martin, was established in 2008 to foster an understanding and appreciation of the American Theater.

"Women's Project turns 32 this year, and we're young, healthy, and coming off the best seasons in our history. To be honored by The Players now is so rewarding-it's like we're being given the long overdue opportunity to send Edwin Booth and Aphra Behn on a dream date," said Dr. Crosby, now in her third full season as Producing Artistic Director of Women's Project.

Women's Project (WP) produces theater created by women, providing a forum for women's perspectives on political, social, and cultural topics. WP was founded in 1978 by Julia Miles to address the conspicuous under-representation of women theater artists in the professional theater. During its 32 years, countless artists have achieved significant recognition through WP productions, including Anne Bogart, Eve Ensler, Maria Irene Fornes, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Leigh Silverman, and Anna Deavere Smith, among the many. WP has staged over 600 mainstage productions and developmental projects, and published ten anthologies of plays by women. In 1998, WP purchased a historic off-Broadway venue on Manhattan's West 55th Street, making WP the first and only women's theater company to hold the keys to its own stage.

Wendy McClellan is a WP Lab member. For more info on the director and WP Lab, click http://www.womensproject.org/OR_creativeteam.html
For more info on Maggie Siff, Kelly Hutchinson and Andy Paris, click http://www.womensproject.org/OR_creativeteam.html

Or, opens at Women's Project, 424 West 55th Street. Single tickets are $52.00 and are on sale now at www.Telecharge.com or 212.239.6200.

The Players www.theplayersnyc.org.

 

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